Program comprehension in multi-language systems

This paper presents an approach to program comprehension in multi-language systems. Such systems are characterized by a high amount of source codes in various languages for programming, database definition and job control. Coping with those systems requires the references crossing the language boundaries to be analyzed. Using the EER/GRAL approach to graph-based conceptual modeling, models representing relevant aspects of single language are built and integrated into a common conceptual model. Since conceptual modeling focusses on specific problems, the integrated model presented here is especially tailored to multi-language aspects. Software systems are parsed and represented according to this conceptual model and queried by using a powerful graph query mechanism. This allows multi-language cross references to be easily retrieved. The multi-language conceptual model and the query facilities have been developed in cooperation with the maintenance programmers at an insurance company within the GUPRO project.